Everyone forgets commitments from time to time, and
doctor's appointments are far from an exception. But
missing appointments with your health care provider
can be both a drain on medical resources and a danger
to your health. This holds all too true in the case
of regular breast cancer screenings, which are recommended
for women over the age of 50, or even younger women
depending on which health care authority you ask, in
order to detect early signs of cancer.
The importance of breast cancer screenings, particularly
among women at higher risk, is clear: detecting cancer
early increases the likelihood of recovery. And with
simply forgetting appointments being cited as the most
common reason for missing breast cancer screening appointments,
it seems ensuring that women in at-risk groups remember
their appointments is a priority.
The Imperial College Healthcare Charity agreed, and
funded a study that sought to test the efficacy of reminder
text messages in increasing attendance at a woman's
first breast cancer screening. The simple study divided
participants, who were women aged 47 to 53, into an
experimental condition of about 450 individuals who
received text messages to remind them of their appointments
and a control condition of 435 individuals. Researchers
monitored and compared their breast cancer screening
appointment attendance to determine whether the texts
had a significant impact.
And, it seems, they did. A large majority of 72% of
the experimental group attended their screenings, compared
to 60% of the control condition. Overall, the women
who received text message reminders were 20% more likely
to show up to their appointments, with women from low-income
areas being 28% more likely to attend after receiving
reminder texts. This greater change in attendance among
women who are more likely to be low-income is especially
significant, as lower-income people tend to be less
likely to get the health care they need.
These numbers speak quite clearly: text messaging reminders
improve appointment attendance. Broader implementation
of text message reminders by health care providers could
be a great move to benefit their patients' health, not
to mention to cut down on potential future health care
expenses for the patient should a cancer go undetected.
The reminder texts also had an additional, more unexpected
benefit: the women in the experimental condition who
still did not attend their appointments were three times
as likely to cancel their appointment in advance than
women who did not receive text messages. Advanced cancellations
are a great help to health care providers as opposed
to no-shows, which deny providers expected revenue,
waste resources, and hurt the practice's efficiency
and timeliness by backing up operations.
It's clear that text message reminders for breast cancer
screening appointments are effective in even more ways
than we might have thought. Appointment reminder texts
from health care providers may really be the way of
the future.
About the Author -
Sharon Housley is the VP of Marketing for NotePage,
Inc. a software company for communication software solutions.
http://www.notepage.net
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